woe is me

[xparrot]

I am just not cut out to be a slash writer. I can't write smut! I want to write smut. But the chars, they want to talk. For 8 pages! The hell, Lex? You want Clark. He wants you. What is the problem here? Just get down on your knees, boy. Geeze. It's not that difficult.

For some reason I can only write smut very late at night. Four in the morning when I'm supposed to be asleep, then I'll have all manner of sexy bodies in my head, writhing together under the sheets/against the wall/over the desk/in the mud/what-have-you. The rest of the time, might as well be a lost cause. Talking, though. I can write endless discussion anytime. I ought to stick to gen. But I like slash, too, darn it! If only it weren't haaaard...(and not in the good way.)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I am quite possibly the worst slash fan ever, in that half the time I don't even read the smut; I skim the sex to get to the juicy bits, which for me is the...talking. And angst. And cuteness. And basically all the relationshipping that happens in between. This is probably why I can be both a slash and a gen fan without much mental dissonance. Though it doesn't explain why I have pairings like Clark/Lex which I simply cannot see as gen (even when I don't always read and can't hardly write the slashy bits.)

Comments

[sumeria.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, that's true of course. By 'action' I didn't really mean 'combat', though, I meant... well, action. Combat, sex, it doesn't really matter. Events. Women -in general- (and I do know that I'm wildly over-generalizing everything here) are only engaged by such things inasmuch as they are connected to the emotions, ie, the relationships.

Obviously, tastes differ, and some women find sex scenes intrinsically more interesting than others. But hasn't the overwhelming response in this thread been to say, "I like sex, but really only when it's integrated with the talking, with the relationships; only when it has an emotional, rather than purely physical, content"?

I've certainly seen more than my share of shounen tournament type things as well, but I have observed that my enjoyment of any given sequence appears to be a lot more dependant than that of my male friends on how much the involved charaters interest me. The fight sequences by themselves do nothing for me, it's the characters who I want to see fighting.

Does this distinction make sense?

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

The problem with taking a sample from my lj is that I tend to write slash with relatively little sex, so most of the commenters here already like that sort of fic! I don't have PWP fans friending my lj because that's not what I write - answers might be different in different forums.

I agree that in general women are more engaged by relationships/emotional content, but that's an incredibly broad generalization. I know many women who are interested in action purely as action; I find certain types (The Matrix, for instance) appealing divorced from the characters (I appreciate the prettiness of the actors, but that's another story); and my sister likes quite a lot more movies and such in that vein.

Though what I was really saying was agreeing with you, that women like action more when it's involving characters they like. However, I know quite a few female fen who don't like characters/relationships on their own - they only like them in the context of action. I myself tend to be bored by straight romance; I much prefer relationships happening within the context of action. The action is crucial to my enjoyment, and I think for some slash fen, the sexual action - with all it represents emotionally and character-wise - is a significant part of their enjoyment of slash.

Basically, yes, almost all female fen prefer sex with emotional content rather than straight porn; but some fen prefer the relationships only when they include that emotionally-charged sex. Maybe, anyway...